


Nothing Fits the Body So Well as Water

by nonbinary_renfri



Series: Things That Might've Happened [5]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types, Wiedźmin | The Witcher Series - Andrzej Sapkowski
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Blood and Injury, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Pre-Poly, Scents & Smells, and hands. lots of hands, but it's good. i think, haha - Freeform, inspired in large part by the lovely pine-scented soap i bought over the holidays, it's simply abt. the intricacies of bathing, jaskier is only mentioned not present, this got a lot longer than i expected it to
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-18 20:48:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29374854
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nonbinary_renfri/pseuds/nonbinary_renfri
Summary: Geralt and Yennefer bathe together after the witcher returns late at night from an exhausting but ultimately successful hunt.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Jaskier | Dandelion/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia/Yennefer z Vengerbergu | Yennefer of Vengerberg
Series: Things That Might've Happened [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2082609
Comments: 7
Kudos: 31





	Nothing Fits the Body So Well as Water

As he crests the hill on horseback and the twisting tower comes into view, Geralt can feel the Cat potion he’d taken hours previous finally losing its grip on his eyes. The vivid detail in the world trickles slowly away and his vision grows dimmer and grayer with every passing moment. He is tired and empty and it hurts to see the colors and fine features go, but his sight still holds strong enough that he can see the spire rising up ahead, his destination within reach. Once he’s there, he can rest his weary bones.

Sometimes, Geralt misses the old days of lacking anyone who cared waiting upon his reappearance; where he could curl up in the leaf litter after an exhausting fight and slip into much-needed meditation for hours on end as healing potions coursed through his veins, doing their gruesome work. But now he is expected to return, so he must go with haste to his companions lest they fear for his continued existence. As much as he’d prefer to nap in the woods until dawn instead, mending what damage had been done to his body.

The stone gargoyles survey him with beady eyes as he passes under the archway they’d been carved to oversee. In the flickering lantern light, one of them seems to sneer at the disgusting baggage strapped to Roach’s side.

Geralt needs to go to sleep.

But the gargoyle is right; the archgriffin’s head hanging from his horse’s saddle is particularly foul, and once he gets it off of her she’ll deserve a good rub down and a late night snack for her trouble. So that’s what Geralt sets about doing once he’s well into the tower’s cobblestone courtyard; he dismounts and hauls the gore-crusted trophy off of Roach to hang it on a convenient outcropping instead, before leading her into the stables. Untacking his horse, he gives her a good brushing down and finds her a nice clean stall, settling her in for the night with a trough of fresh water and some dried oats to munch on. Before he leaves, Geralt presses his roughly-stubbled cheek to her wide, smoothly-haired one, open-palmed hands gently stroking down the sides of her neck. Pulling back to kiss her velvety nose tip with a murmured, “Thanks, Roach,” he finally steps away, closing the stall door behind him. Geralt stows his swords among his horse’s unloaded tack in a stab at some sort of polite decorum before he departs from the stables.

The stone steps up to the entranceway are hard against his tired feet and the heavy oaken door creaks loudly as he pushes it open. The foyer is dark and lifeless; peering into the adjacent chambers reveal they lie in much the same state. As the white-haired witcher wanders past, the eyes of the seemingly decorative statues look as if they are following his movement. In the sitting room, the barest red-orange glow emanates from dying fireplace embers.

Feeling only slightly miffed, Geralt trudges up the spiral staircase towards the rooms Yennefer’s… acquaintance had allocated for their travelling party when they’d arrived. As he approaches, it becomes clear that someone, at least, has waited up for him.

When he opens the door with the sliver of light spilling out from underneath, part of him is pleased to find Yennefer curled up in an armchair and wrapped in a black silk robe, with a small hard-cover book cradled in one hand and her dark hair spilling in loose waves over her shoulders. Another part of him is still weary and wishing he had just burrowed under a bush for the night; that he wouldn’t have to expend the effort socialization demands and drag sentences from his throat word by exhausted word. But he has already chosen to be here and it is far too late to go back on that decision now.

Yennefer glances up at the sound of his entrance and sighs at the sight of his mucky, bloody form. “Oh, dear,” she drawls, snapping her book shut one-handedly with a solid thump. She sets it down on a side table next to the chair and stands, removing the thin gold-wire rimmed crystal reading glasses that were perched on her nose and folding them with quiet clicks. They find a place on the table beside the book.

“It’s dead?” she asks, and he nods. The barrage of follow-up questions he habitually tenses for never come; instead Yennefer responds simply with, “Good.”

The raven-haired woman’s amethyst eyes survey the witcher up and down, clearly cataloguing his visible injuries. Geralt resists the urge to shift self-consciously. He came out well-off, in his opinion, especially on his own against an angry archgriffin. A few cuts and bruises are nothing to feel shame over. But something about the sorceress’s gaze always manages to remind him somehow of the instructors from his upbringing; like she can see and analyze every misstep he made during the fight with just a haughty, lingering look at him.

Well. He often feels her consciousness dancing along the edges of his mind’s natural barriers on the occasions that their eyes purposefully meet. Perhaps with some people, she could easily do such a thing.

“Come,” Yennefer says, turning her piercing scrutiny away from him. “I drew us a bath.”

Geralt’s hands tighten at his sides. He resists the urge to snap back pettily that he doesn’t want to bathe, he wants to _sleep_. Oh, how he longs for dirt sticking to his cheek and clinging to his eyelashes, leaf chunks crinkling into his hair and the creases of his clothes. The bugs and earthworms don’t require him to bathe before welcoming him to join them in their beds. But, since he made his way back here instead and he wants to bury his head in a down pillow tonight, Geralt swallows his objections and follows Yennefer into the bathing chamber set off of the larger bedroom. He tries to keep his longing stare away from the feather mattress and soft-looking woven duvet as he goes past, and does his best to convince himself that Yennefer isn’t being purposefully cruel. He knows she was concerned about him taking on this contract alone, but their circumstances and cover story required that she stay behind with Ciri while he dealt with the hunt. After all, what responsible mage would abandon their young student in a strange, unfamiliar place, when there’s a war on, in order to help a monster hunter they hired as a bodyguard do a side job? Even if the… acquaintance who had offered the contract and given them safe lodgings for the time it took Geralt to fulfill it had assumed that Yennefer was “hiring” the witcher through means other than coin, undue strange behavior might still have brought unwanted scrutiny their way. The dark-haired sorceress had been worried and upset by the rather unfavorable turn to their situation, but she hadn’t seemed angry with _him_.

So. Perhaps Yennefer had simply not considered that when Geralt returned from a hunt this drained, walking past a bed and not collapsing face-first onto it was akin to torture for him. He’d actually gotten into the habit, for a while, once he was traveling alone again, of not returning to inns after messy hunts because he’d kept ruining sheets and it was bleeding dry his already too-meager purse. The witcher supposes that may be part of why a mulch mattress and moss pillow are calling to him so this night; as a certain blue-eyed someone might’ve put it, he’s repeated the action of sleeping where he fell after a fight often enough that it’s already become a bit of an ingrained, expected habit for him.

Regardless of the reasons behind his slightly petulant disposition, Geralt is now standing in a room tiled deep reddish-brown in his full witcher gear, the black leather smeared with entrails and gore and mud. He’s fairly certain there are twigs in his hair and every inch of his exposed skin is coated in monster nastiness just like his armor. Drying blood flakes off of his neck where the collar of his chest piece chafes against it. He’s even still got his dirty boots on like some kind of uncivilized boor. Gods, he hopes he didn’t track shit onto that nice fur rug in the bedroom.

“Can’t you just snap your fingers and magic me clean?” Geralt allows himself to grumble half-heartedly.

“I could,” responds Yennefer with the slight curve of a smile to her words, though the expression itself is hidden from the witcher by her turned back, “though I’d have to be very careful. More than likely you’d still lose the first layer or twenty of your skin alongside all the grime, especially considering how much of what you’re coated in is… organic materials. No, it’s better for you to get clean the ordinary way. Besides, the ritual of bathing can be incredibly soothing to the body and mind.” She ignores the skeptical side-eye he gives her at that statement. With a snap of her fingers, the bucket the sorceress has been filling at the wall faucet vanishes and reappears above Geralt, upending itself over his head. Now-dirty rivulets of water stream from his hair and drip down onto his armor. There’s a certain pouty quality to the glare he levels at her in response.

“You look like a feral cat that tried to drown itself in a polluted river,” Yennefer tells him, summoning the bucket back to her to begin filling it again.

“I’m taking off my armor,” Geralt grits out. At least the water had been relatively warm rather than freezing cold, though the latter might have woken him up a bit more.

He strips down to his smallclothes and then, after a brief hesitation, removes them as well. The chain of his medallion is pulled tight against his neck; with clumsy fingers he brings the pendant back around to the front and tugs on it gently to untwist the silver links from where they’ve wrapped around the dark brown leather cord of the other necklace he’s wearing, its carved wood pendant resting in the hollow of his throat. Out of the corner of his eye he can see Yennefer following his lead and shedding the silk dressing gown to reveal only her bare form underneath. She has a necklace on too, though the braided black leather of hers clings close to the column of her neck with the light-hued wood of the pendant as a pale contrast against both her skin and the necklace’s cord. An elegant vision of raven hair and tawny limbs, she moves to drape her removed garment over the top of a paneled privacy divider that’s set off to the side.

Geralt dumps the pieces of his armor in the corner on the floor because they are pretty nasty. His undergarments, soaked through with sweat and spotted with blood in places, join them. He feels like a sallow mess of scars and bruises next to her rosy, near-unblemished form, but he would feel something close to this inadequacy in comparison with anyone not of his guild. The appeal others find in his gnarled flesh escapes him.

Yennefer hums her approval at the view and magically pours another bucket of water over the witcher’s head. The warmth clings to his hair and spills over his cheekbones, running in tributaries across his skin and leaving behind dimly cleansed lines in patterns like lightning. He watches blankly, exhaustion hanging heavy over his mind and limbs, as blood and muck drip to the floor, trickling away from him to disappear down the drain set into the tile.

“Geralt?” prods Yennefer’s voice and he slowly refocuses his gaze on her. She’s closer to him now, another bucket of water on the floor by her side with two washcloths slung over its edge and a scrub brush submerged into it. Picking up one of the rags, she hands him the other and together they clean the worst of the grime from his body. After they’ve gone over the entirety of him at least twice with the soon-to-be rags, the dark-haired woman empties the now-dirty water down the drain and goes to refill the bucket at the faucet once again.

On her way back over to Geralt, Yennefer’s eyes narrow. She catches the exhausted slouch of his shoulders, the slight sway to his posture and the faltering of his stance as hurt leg muscles threaten to give way beneath pain and fatigue. Setting the bucket down on the tile, the black-haired woman retrieves a small wooden stool from where it is tucked away in a corner of the room, and places it behind the witcher. With firm but gentle hands, she guides Geralt down to sit. His knees and back and ribs scream out their relief at the shift of his weight and his eyelids flutter closed momentarily while he rides out the feeling. The varnished wood of the stool is cold against his bare ass.

Pulling the scrub brush from the bucket, Yennefer brandishes it against the more stubborn bits of gruesome grime that still remain plastered to the witcher’s skin. There’s a bit of lye mixed into this batch of water; little soap bubbles cling where the rim of the liquid meets the bucket’s side and Geralt can smell the slightly peppery odor of it on the steam-heavy air. He closes his eyes, trying to achieve something like a light meditation as Yennefer scrapes him as clean as she can.

Finally he hears her set the brush aside. Fingertips prod into the mass of bruising over his ribs and Geralt flinches more due to the surprise of it than the pain, his eyes shooting open.

“I’m alright, Yen,” he assures her when she won’t look at his face, focused only on carefully palpitating his aching side to feel the bones beneath the blue and purple. “It’s just bruising, I promise. The cut on my thigh is the worst of my injuries, and it doesn’t even need stitching.”

Humming quietly in acknowledgement, the dark-haired sorceress crouches down to examine said cut. Her hand curls around the inside of his upper leg to steady it as she gently washes out the wound with fresh hot water, fingers pressed over the taut tendon leading up to his groin. The cut stings fiercer as she cleans it, but Geralt endures without complaint, his inner thigh tingling beneath her touch. He had treated the injury to his own satisfaction soon after the fight had ended, but he understands the need to feel the warmth of another’s life with your own two hands, to see the proof with your own two eyes that flesh hasn’t been ripped and torn and rent beyond repair.

Nodding her approval at his previous assessment of the wound, Yennefer rises to her feet and moves behind him to begin unsnarling sticks from still dirt-speckled white hair, tutting at the many tangles she encounters along the way. It doesn’t make sense for Geralt’s skin to crawl from her presence at his back, so he forces his bunched shoulder muscles to relax and breathes out the feeling into the steam-warm air. Yennefer makes no comment, but she takes a moment to rub her thumbs upwards along the tension in his neck, pressing tenderly into the base of his skull before she returns to the task at hand. A small pile of twigs forms on top of the dirty washcloth spread out on the tile floor beside them. Once she’s removed near a campfire’s worth of wood from among his snarled strands, the sorceress pulls Geralt up off of the stool and towards the bathtub.

He tries not to groan aloud. “I just want to sleep, Yen,” the witcher implores, pulling back half-heartedly on the hands grasping his. He’s clean enough for bed by now, isn’t he? He so badly wants to lay down.

Yennefer tugs him forwards anyways. “Trust me,” she says and he gives in and lets her have her way. The wide pool of the bath is still steaming hot, an improbability considering how long it has been allowed to sit unattended. But, after all, this is a magician’s tower. The tub itself is wide and rectangular with tapered corners, tiled cream and white in contrast to the dark warmth of the rest of the room. It isn’t as expansive as the one they’d shared at the mayor’s house in Rinde, but it’s plenty large enough for two people.

At Yennefer’s insistence, Geralt begins his descent into the water. It bites sharply at his toes and shins, chilled as he suddenly realizes they still are, too hot against his skin but also somehow the perfect searing temperature. He sinks to his chin in the bath, the heat of it washing over him. The water near-burns in the most luxurious way and he can’t help the shudder that shakes through him, nor the pleasured sigh that escapes his lips.

Yennefer is maybe smiling a little bit. “Dunk your head under, too.”

Following her instructions, Geralt submerges himself completely under the water. He remains beneath the surface for a moment, feeling gossamer strands of his hair floating around to tickle against his neck, and relishes the tingle of the last of the outside’s cold dissipating from his nose and cheeks. When he finally resurfaces, there is definitely a smile on Yennefer’s lips.

“Your toiletries are on the side there,” she tells him, beginning her own descent into the bath via the tiled stairs. Spotting his meager belongings at the tub’s edge, Geralt wades his way over to them and scoops up a palm-sized rectangle wrapped in waxed paper. Untying the rough pieces of twine holding the packaging together, he peels back the paper to reveal a fresh dark green bar of soap. Geralt doesn’t even need to hold it close to his nose to catch the distinct scent of pine trees from the pass to Kaer Morhen, their clean crushed needles and charred bark, and an anxious, skittish part of him that always seems to raise its hackles after a stressful hunt settles slightly.

Wetting the soap in the water, he scrubs it over his biceps and shoulders and chest where they rise above the water’s surface. He would’ve scrubbed it into his hair too if Yennefer hadn’t intervened, snagging the slippery bar from his grip before it can touch the white strands. He allows her to pull him down to sit on the bench within the bath, positioned between her knees with his back to her where she’s seated herself on the tub’s tiled edge. Geralt takes the opportunity to rinse the soap suds from his collarbones and armpits, splashing himself with cupped palms. Yennefer pours amber liquid into her hands from a glass vial and begins working it into his hair, roughly combing through it with her fingers. The hair oil she’s using smells of lemon’s tangy citrus and the floral pungency of lavender. Geralt finds himself relaxing beneath her ministrations, eyelids slowly drooping shut as her fingernails scratch idly against his scalp.

He remains that way even as she switches from her fingers to a carved bone comb, carefully using the tines to pick apart and unravel the slowly loosening mess of tangles adorning his head. It takes her a good while, but eventually his white hair is shining and smooth, the comb sliding through it with barely a catch. With a small dish, she uses water to rinse away the oil coating the strands, and the pool’s surface gains a kaleidoscopic sheen around them. The bath’s heat hasn’t decreased in the slightest and the water shimmers iridescent beneath the humid air.

Rousing the witcher from his almost-doze with a gentle flick to the ear, Yennefer coaxes his reluctant form mostly out of the water’s warmth to sit up on the tiled edge so she can give his legs and feet a proper rubdown with the soap. The bar skirts carefully around the cut on his thigh where Geralt would have just mindlessly scrubbed over it; she treats him so delicately, sometimes. There are nights where she is the one who tangles his hair, who leaves his skin marked with love bites and bruises and red scratches from her nails. But there are moments like now too, where she handles him as if he is something easy to break, and he lets his protests die in his throat and lets her treat him gently. Very few people are allowed to see him as intimately as this; perhaps, on nights like tonight, she recognizes something he doesn’t.

He slips gratefully back into the steaming water when the sorceress declares she’s finished with his legs, the goosebumps that had plagued his arms and shoulders in the time outside of the heated bath quickly vanishing.

The witcher’s golden gaze is heavy-lidded still, but the brief moment of chill has awoken him some. As the heat creeps its way fully back inside his bones, Yennefer climbs down into the water with him to wash his back, the bar of soap sliding over bumps and rifts of scar tissue. She helps him rinse away the soap suds from the skin he can’t see and slides fingers through his now-silky hair and Geralt’s gentled peace of mind is suddenly disturbed by the urge to return this unasked-for kindness in some way, though he’s certain his efforts will fall short of how much she’s done for him this night. He reaches for her loose dark hair, dry still except for where the tips have barely brushed the water’s surface. But as he tries to draw his fingers tenderly through, the newly-formed scabs on his knuckles, saturated and fragile from the bath as they’ve become, are easily yanked askew. When he pulls his hand free, fresh blood wells up in the opened hollows in his skin and drips across his fingers. A ruby droplet hovers at the edge of his pinky before it shudders and tumbles away, the tiny crimson-copper smudge of it quickly dissolving into the clear crystal bath below. Yennefer takes his palm in hers and leans in to press her lips to the opened wound, a tingle of her magic electrifying the air and the medallion against his chest, and then rinses the cherry liquid from her mouth and the now unblemished back of his hand.

Geralt pulls away from her, an upset expression flashing across his face.

The dark-haired mage goes still, hurt and confusion twisting her brow at his unanticipated reaction. She wants to look the witcher in the eye but he keeps his head turned away from her, avoiding her searching gaze.

After a moment of awkward speechlessness hangs between them, Yennefer lets out an exasperated sigh. Water sloshes against tile, rippling away from the movement of her naked form as she sidles closer to the bath’s edge to retrieve a hair clasp. She binds her mostly-dry hair up into a bun, twisting it around itself. Taking the bar of pine-scented soap from the tub side, she gives it a quick rinse and then offers it to Geralt, asking of him, “Wash my back for me?”

Silence is followed by a grunt of acquiescence and calloused fingers brush hers as he takes the soap. Turning away, Yennefer presents her back to him. Water laps softly against her hips as the witcher shifts closer to her. The slick bar follows the line of her spine, Geralt’s rough fingertips grazing gently against her skin on either side of it. As it slides beneath her shoulder blade she has to hold back the shudder that wants to radiate through her at the sheer intimacy of the feeling.

After her back is rinsed and soap-sud free, Geralt brushes his nose tip along the nape of Yennefer’s neck. Goosebumps prickle the skin of her arms at the tickle of it. The aroma of pine needles brings the forest buried in her scent into verdant bloom beneath his sensitive nose, and he’s so very glad he chose to spend the night in these woods instead. “You should use my soap more often,” the white-haired witcher murmurs lowly, intoxicated.

Yennefer laughs softly and lets him pull her back against his chest, their heated bare skin sticking together as he nestles his face against her shoulder, breathing her in low and slow. Eventually, though, she pulls free of his arms and pushes him to settle back onto the tub’s bench so she can run the soap along the lines of the rest of her lithe limbs as he watches with half-lidded, burning golden eyes. Once she smells like a dense evergreen thicket growing lush through the wild mountain valleys, she straddles Geralt’s thighs and settles herself onto his lap, his straight razor in hand.

As Yennefer’s hips come to rest above his, a body part of Geralt’s that has stayed relatively uninvolved throughout the rest of the evening perks up slightly in interest. The sorceress clearly notices as she smirks down at him, sliding their bodies together beneath the water. More of an exhale than a noise, the quietest whimper punches out of Geralt’s throat at the feeling the movement brings.

Stilling her hips, Yennefer presses a soothing kiss to the corner of his mouth.

Tentatively, Geralt lifts a hand to cup one of the breasts hovering in front of him, crystalline water droplets clinging to the perfect curve of its shape like dew on the petals of a rosebud. He slides a thumb across her dusky nipple, feeling it grow taut, and looks up at Yennefer questioningly. He’s so _tired_ , still… but with her right here, skin naked against his and smelling so much like home….. he’d do anything she wanted him to right now.

Something about the look she gives him in return is so warm and loving he has to turn his face away. The twist to her lips isn’t exactly a smile, but adoration beams out from her expression regardless. At the same time, there is heartbreak in her eyes.

“No, Geralt,” Yennefer says softly, “We don’t have to do that tonight. Just relax and let me take care of this scruffy beard of yours.”

He tries to, tries to settle back comfortably with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment in his chest and the most ethereal woman he has ever known shifting her weight slightly in his lap as she smears shaving cream along his jaw and chin, below his nose and down his neck. She wields the straight razor with confidence, meticulously shearing away his several days’ worth of stubble and leaving smooth, unscathed skin in her wake. By the time she’s sliding the sharp blade carefully along the vulnerable line of his exposed throat, catching the last remnants of his neckbeard, Geralt has grown a little more than half-hard beneath her.

Yennefer is certain to have noticed this because every time she moves her body brushes against his, which continues to make matters worse. She doesn’t comment on it though, lifting slightly off of him to set the razor aside and snag ahold of a clean washcloth.

Geralt shifts to let her move more freely and his back unsticks from the tile wall behind him. A grimace crosses the witcher’s face as his skin begins to crawl uncomfortably, like he’s fallen straight backwards into a patch of poison ivy.

Of course, Yennefer moves back in time to catch the unhappy set to his expression, though she waits until she’s wiped the remnants of shaving cream from above his upper lip with a warm, now-damp cloth to ask, “What’s wrong?”

Geralt frowns up at her, feeling inconsequential complaints bubbling their way into his throat after his long, exhausting mess of a day. “My back is itchy. Honestly, all of me is itchy now. The hot water’s drying out my skin.” The washcloth traces along the line of his jaw. “This is why I’ll always swear by scrubbing down in streams. Sometimes it’s snowmelt, sure, but it doesn’t dehydrate your skin like a hot bath does, and the cold water improves blood circulation, you know. When you do it regularly enough, you’re able to get over the shock of the temperature quickly enough.”

The sorceress nods along good-naturedly with his grumbling, giving his clean face a final wipe down with a freshly-rinsed washcloth. “Well, you won’t have to worry about it much longer. After we get out, I’ll rub lotion into your back for you.”

Beneath her, the witcher goes oddly still.

Frowning, Yennefer moves fingers to smooth wet strands of snow-pale hair behind his ear. “Geralt? Are you alright?” Like before, he shies from her gaze as she tries to meet his eyes, and frustration threatens to choke her with its spindly, awful fingers. “Why won’t you look at me?”

It isn’t only discomfort with expressing his intimate feelings that has Geralt ducking her scrutiny now. There’s guilt buried within him, too, that he wishes could go unquestioned. Guilt that someone else has consistently been on his mind throughout the night, despite the depth of feeling he knows he has for the woman right in front of him. He doesn’t want to admit it to her because he’s too exhausted right now to deal with the inferno of her anger crashing down on him. So he looks away and hopes Yennefer will allow the issue to drop.

That hope, of course, is fruitless.

“Please, Geralt, talk to me,” the sorceress quietly pleads, wisteria irises searching his down-turned face. This stonewalling when something is clearly bothering him confuses and rather worries her; she thought after their rather strenuous reunion they’d finally reached some sort of consensus between them that they would at least try to communicate about things, even when they found it to be difficult.

The witcher is chewing on the inside of his lip like he does when something he doesn’t want to figure out how to talk about is rankling at him. Exhaustion hangs off the slumped lines of his shoulders and the bruises beneath his eyes aren’t only the result of violence.

An idea comes to Yennefer, though she lingers over it hesitantly for a long moment before offering up, “We can either discuss what’s going on with tongues and voices, or… I can look past, into your thoughts, if you’re willing to let me.” She is tentative to offer this because she’s hurt him with it before, but she doesn’t want this skill of theirs to only be negative between them. The last lover she had truly shared a mental connection with was Istredd, and she misses it, sometimes. No one has known her so intimately since him, but she’s thought about asking the witcher for something like this since the day they’d met, almost. Her fingers find Geralt’s chin and turns his head towards her; as their eyes meet, the sorceress’s consciousness caresses his, silky and foreign and intimate like her fingertips stroking over his Adam’s apple.

Geralt marvels at what seems to him to be his own hypocrisy; he’ll willingly let her quite literally hold a razor-sharp blade to his exposed throat, only to then shy away from baring his thoughts and emotions to her. But even as he tries to gather the words to explain aloud the conflict warring in his heart, he can feel the betrayal brewing within them. Even when well-rested and with topics not so delicate as this, his speech stumbles and falters and causes offense. So the witcher contemplates the other option she’s given him.

He remembers the last time she was truly in his mind; how she had secretively wormed her way past his barriers to lock him away in a corner of his consciousness, making his body a puppet of her will. Now she is expressly asking his permission, though; this time around the contact wouldn’t be any sort of hostile invasion. And, after all, how often has he wished that others could simply read his thoughts so he wouldn’t have to struggle to speak them aloud? With something like this, he isn’t sure any words spoken at all would be enough to explain it.

Having made his decision, he shifts his attention back to the woman in his lap and makes eye contact with her, molten gold finally meeting crystalline amethyst. His thumbs trace the strong line of her jaw. “Look past,” he murmurs, using mental fingers to reach for and stretch thin the natural barriers surrounding his mind, bestowed upon him alongside his other witcher’s abilities. He feels Yennefer’s consciousness brush against those immovable borders as her dark pupils stare deep into his own, and then there’s a slight feeling somewhat like pressure. It increases, and increases, and, with something reminiscent of a sear of pain but no true physical equivalent he could describe, bursts through. Geralt can’t help the sharp inhale that sucks in through his teeth at the feeling.

Yennefer’s attempt to sooth the discomfort touches both his body and mind, her fingers lightly tracing his cheekbone. “I’m sorry,” she whispers with lips and thoughts, and he shakes his head, replying, _you have nothing to apologize for_.

The sorceress doesn’t press onward past the surface of his cognizance, but the query of his earlier evasiveness flickers across to him like a leaf caught in the wind.

With hesitation and trepidation that Yennefer can feel through their connection, Geralt cautiously opens the floodgates of his memories, the contents of which had been thoroughly stirred by the night’s events.

_An inn door with light spilling out from underneath. Clear sapphire eyes, glancing up at him from a notebook filled with chicken-scratch scribblings. “Take a bath first so you don’t dirty the sheets, you big oaf.” Buckets of water unceremoniously emptied over his head. The pain of a venom burn across his shoulders; the near-unbearable sear of it as he tries to lift his arms, barely getting them up past chest height. Nearly-warm water lapping against his skin as someone else’s hands wash the filth from his hair. Lute-calloused fingers trace along his jawline, feeling for the remnants of his stubble after he’s shaved. “I can rub that into your back for you.” The scent of chamomile hangs in the air and the same fingers are pressing into the meat of his bottom, the sore strained muscles there aching deliciously beneath their strength. He can taste the electricity of the want flooding through him as they slide slickly past more intimate places-_

“Oh, the bard,” Yennefer breathes into the air between them, which now hangs heavy with something fervent and desiring. The atmosphere sings with tension like in the moments before a thunderstorm breaks. Geralt feels as if time slows as he waits for whatever the violet-eyed mage might do in response to what he’s just revealed. She reaches past him, fingers finding a porcelain container of body wash on the tub side. Perhaps the witcher is mistaken, but he could’ve sworn it hadn’t been there previously.

His baffled musings, which he suspects she may still be able to hear, are interrupted by the brush of her lips against his own. Sidelining his confusion at her unexpected reaction for the moment, Geralt chases her mouth and loses himself in the feeling of kissing Yennefer back. It’s heady, the taste of her on his tongue and the scrape of her teeth against his lip and her skin soft and sleek beneath his fingertips. Finally they separate for air with a wet sound and the witcher gazes up at the dark-haired woman reverently, his cat-like pupils blown wide and mouth left slightly reddened.

She unseals the lid of the container in her hands and the smell slams into Geralt like the blow from the archgriffin’s powerful wing that had knocked him head over heels and badly bruised his ribs. Metaphorically, of course; in reality he stays seated in the bath, breathing in a scent that somehow evokes Jaskier so strongly while barely smelling of the actual man himself. The sweetness of baked apples mixed with crisp aromatic champagne; it’s not something Geralt would mark as one of the bard’s distinctive perfumes, yet it rings so reminiscent of him all the same….. but, also, he suddenly realizes, of Yennefer, too.

Geralt’s nostrils flare despite him having already thoroughly determined that the sorceress is drenched in the bouquet of an alpine thicket. Still, he finds himself stating, “You’ve used this.”

“Of course I have,” Yennefer replies matter-of-factly, “It’s mine.”

She scoops out a dollop of the product and sets the container back on the tub side with a sharp click of porcelain against tile. As her wisteria blossom irises flits down towards his armpits, the witcher, not knowing quite what to expect, says warningly, “ _Yen_.”

“Shhh,” she tells him with a slightly mischievous grin, pressing a light kiss to the tip of his nose. Her hands do go into his armpits after that, but she doesn’t linger long or do anything offensive or uncouth, like attempting to tickle him.

Next, soapy hands smooth their way beneath his pectoral muscles and then move to his arms, her palms cupping his elbows as thumbs idly trace the lines of the blue veins at their crease.

A memory flashes unbidden through Geralt’s mind, then, as they sometimes do; a flash of long thin needles going into those same veins and vicious liquid flowing underneath his skin through tubes, and of metal restraints holding him down as the agony of being remade tore him apart.

Yennefer’s hands are clenched on his forearms now, her grip beginning to approach painfully tight. Her face is wan and her expression is miserable. She lingered on the surface of his mind, as Geralt had thought, and he had unintentionally projected his recollections to her, like a mirror directly reflecting the sun into her eyes. But, rather than pity for him, as he assumes is the source of her upset, her distress stems from her own memory of stone walls and world-changing procedures and boiling blood screaming beneath aching skin. As a trained sorceress, though, she is able to keep her thoughts from spilling unbidden through the connection to him.

Maybe if she hadn’t had that ability, his next words wouldn’t have been a roughened, “Yen, some privacy in my own head, please?”

She hesitates and then nods with a sigh. “Alright.” Detaching her consciousness from his leaves her feeling starkly alone and cold despite the body just beneath hers and the heat of the bath against her skin, but she knows to do anything else would be to shatter the fragile trust they’ve built between them. But she can’t help the way she curls in on herself slightly, trying to brace against the desolate chill of loneliness.

Geralt’s fingers brush against her cheek, warm as the summer sun. He meets her eyes, a slight apology in his gaze but no sign of remorse for his decision. Yennefer’s eyelids flutter closed and she leans forward, her forehead pressing to his. Their nose tips brush and they simple linger there for a long moment, breathing in each other’s presence. Though she has no witcher’s sense of smell, Yennefer manages to catch the scent of her hair oil as Geralt’s white strands fall past her face. It’s nice, she thinks, to have marked him as hers in some miniscule way. Even if it would soon be masked by the stench of whatever monster’s entrails he ended up covered in next.

Opening his eyes and pulling back slightly, Geralt smiles at her softly. “Now,” he begins, murmuring low, “could you loosen your grip a bit? You’re cutting off my circulation.”

Glancing down, Yennefer realizes her hands are still clenched on his arms, though her fingers aren’t long enough to wrap completely around the width of the muscle. With a relieved laugh and a more relaxed hold, she pulls him up to his feet into the deepest center part of the bath and licks back into the heat of his mouth. She feels Geralt smile into the kiss as his hands settle against her waist, and it drifts from toothy and eager to something more languid, like a saucepan slow-simmering on the heat of the stove.

Breaking away for a moment to reach for the tub side, Yennefer scoops more cream from the porcelain dish. The dark-haired sorceress coaxes the witcher to lift the foot of his uninjured leg up onto the ledge of the tub’s bench. When he does so, her soap-slick fingers find the back of his knee, plucking along the taut lines of his ligaments as her lips brush against his collarbone. Yennefer has him switch which leg is up so she can repeat the process on the other side. After, however, Geralt’s bare foot stays planted on the bench as the sorceress’s hands wrap around to squeeze the firmness of his ass, his hips twitching forwards under her grip and her fingers caressing the crease where his glutes meet muscular thighs. Then she moves to the front of his body, her fingertips tracing the V-shape of his groin down to where his cock is hanging heavy between his legs. Most of the body wash is gone from her hands by now, but her grip is still damp and slick as it wraps around him.

Geralt’s head drops forward onto her shoulder, a soft groan sighing from his lungs. He presses open-mouthed kisses to her skin, nostrils filled with crushed pine and lemon and spiced apples. Arousal burns through his arteries like molten metal, peaking with her every lingering stroke of his cock and leaving him breathless and too-hot. Despite most of his weight resting on his good leg, the exhaustion of his body is such that his knee begins to tremble beneath him.

Noticing this, Yennefer pauses in her movements to ease the witcher down to sit back on the bench. He goes gratefully, collapsing rather limply against the tile wall. The sorceress takes a moment to dip her fingertips into the body wash container for a bit more of the product before nudging Geralt’s knees apart. She reaches one hand beneath the water to wrap around his cock again while the other leaves a trail of fragrance along his collarbones, the scents of champagne and spiced apple easily reaching his nose. Enraptured golden eyes gaze up at her, his irises a thin gilded edging to the wide onyx darkness of his pupils. Geralt’s eyelids flutter as the building pleasure tightens in his gut and he whines quietly, head tipping back onto the tub’s side. With a twist of her wrist, Yennefer sends him plummeting over the edge of his orgasm, warm bliss pooling between his hips, and his spend spills into the steaming, glistening bath.

She’s quick to hurry him out of the dirtied water after that, though the now-boneless witcher goes rather reluctantly. He wants to lounge in the near-oppressive heat for a bit longer as the pleasured satisfaction slides from his limbs like molasses, but instead he drips onto the floor while arduously attempting to dry himself off with a towel. The bath’s drain gargles behind him as it sucks the bathwater and everything in it down, and Geralt finally registers the subtlest vibration of his medallion as it goes still with the falling water level.

Yennefer, already wrapped in her silk robe once more, reappears at his side as he begins to stem the rivulets flowing from his wet hair. He roughly rubs the towel over it from every which angle, shaking his head out to resettle things occasionally. On one pass, the fibers of the towel scrape against a long cut on his forehead and Geralt pauses with a visible wince.

Yennefer steps closer to him, violet eyes focused on the thin wound, and reaches for his face. Her fingertips trip along above the witcher’s eyebrow, and he can feel the barest tickle of his skin magically knitting itself back together. His hand comes up to grab Yennefer’s wrist and pulls her hand away, stopping the healing before the end of the cut can close.

The sorceress’s eyes narrow indignantly as certain suspicions of hers are confirmed. “Why don’t you want me to heal you?” she demands.

Geralt stares at her for a long moment before responding, his voice low and steady, “Because it’s a waste of both your energy and abilities.”

Raven-wing eyebrows shoot up in offense. “ _I_ choose what is worth expending my chaos on, not you,” hisses Yennefer heatedly, pulling her arm from his grip. It only makes her angrier to know that, with his strength, she can only easily do so because he lets her.

Geralt watches her carefully, a stubborn gleam to his tired yellow irises. “They’re my injuries. Surely I get some say in how I want them to be treated?”

Looking away from him, Yennefer wraps her arms around her waist as she purses her lips. Glancing back over at the white-haired man, she replies, “I suppose it would be… untoward of me to heal you against your wishes, but what I cannot understand is, why? Why are you refusing my healing? I know you’ve said it’s a waste of my energy, but why would that be? Your wounds hurt, do they not?” She pauses as she waits for him to tilt his head in reluctant acknowledgement before continuing, “We’ll have to take to the road again soon. If you’re not in pain tonight you’ll sleep better, and we could use the skills a well-rested witcher in times as dangerous as these.”

“…I fall asleep in pain all the time though,” is the only thing he can think to respond. 

“Well,” Yennefer’s voice is suddenly sharper, her syllables clipped short, “I’ve left you the worst of your bumps and bruises to contend with, so I’m sure you’ll be pleased with that.”

The witcher gazes at the sorceress’s side profile. She’s turned her face away from him; her arms are crossed tightly over her chest and a muscle jumps in her jaw as it relaxes slightly only to clench once more. “……I’m sorry,” he confesses quietly.

“Whatever for?” the tone of her response is cutting.

Geralt steps closer to her, hesitating before reaching out to tuck a loose strand of dark hair behind the shell of her ear. From there he traces along her cheekbone, fingers trailing down to rest against her jaw. Yennefer’s eyes flicker towards his hand before moving up to focus on his face. “I feel as though I’ve hurt you,” the witcher admits, eyebrows furrowed downwards, “but I’m not entirely sure how.”

She turns back towards him then. Amethyst irises search his expression and when she finally speaks the posture of her shoulders is both determined and resigned. “It is painful to know that you would rather suffer than allow me to take care of you.”

Confusion and dismay cloud his golden gaze. “Yen, I… if that’s truly the case, then what was the rest of what we’ve done tonight? What was you washing my back, brushing my hair out in the tub, shaving my face, and everything else? And all of it was wonderful, by the way. You take care of me perfectly as it is, without the use of your healing magic,” Geralt tells her, voice low and raspy and utterly sincere.

Yennefer glances away again, a slight blush warming her cheeks at his statement despite the unhappy crease forming between her eyebrows. “But I also _have_ healing magic,” she insists adamantly, still not truly understanding his rejection of her help, “and you have injuries.”

“They’ll heal on their own,” the witcher says, waving off her persistence dismissively.

The sorceress can feel a swell of indignation rising in her chest at his cavalier attitude. “What was the point of my learning healing magic, then?” she hisses at him.

Irritation twists Geralt’s expression and he bristles, snapping back, “Oh, is that’s the logic we’re using? Well then, if you insist on healing every minor cut I get, what was the point of my mutations?” He ignores her scoff of disbelief, continuing his argument, “By morning these bruises will be yellowing. Within two days they’ll be gone entirely. In a week the only reminder left of this hunt will be a shiny new scar on my thigh, though I doubt even that will be visible long. No, Yen, save your magic for when I’m on the brink of death. Little things like this are best left to heal naturally.”

Despite the humid heat still hanging in the air, the room is icy silent for a long moment before Yennefer cracks it, her voice strong with a well-concealed shake of emotion, “I’ll admit you have something of a point, but it doesn’t change the fact that I think you’re causing yourself unnecessary pain.”

Geralt feels a twinge of melancholic nostalgia. His mind is truly full of a certain bard tonight. “I’m a witcher. Pain is an inevitability of my existence; it isn’t unnecessary, it just is.”

Much like Jaskier’s would have, her mouth twists into an unhappy frown in reaction to that kind of statement. The sorceress presses in closer to Geralt, arms winding around his naked form to surround him as much as possible in her embrace. The silk of her robe is sleek and cool against his bare skin. One hand twines through his still-wet hair and Geralt allows Yennefer to pull his face down to nestle against the junction of her neck and shoulder, his arms wrapping around her waist in return. The witcher nuzzles his clean-shaven cheek against butter-soft fabric and the two simply hold onto each other for a lingering while, their heartbeats pulsing and lungs expanding in unison as they savor the warmth of life within the circle of their arms. It’s funny, how immortality can make one so dreadfully aware of loss.

Finally they separate, tempers mostly calmed and minds quieted by the rhythms of the other’s presence, and Yennefer pushes Geralt back to sit down on the wooden stool.

“I promised you a moisturizing backrub,” she reminds him softly.

The lotion she uses carries only the subtle scent of oats and is cooling against his skin, despite being warmed between the palms of her hands. Itchiness he’s been ignoring since he climbed out of the bath eases as the dryness causing it is soothed, but the other parts of his body where the moisture hasn’t yet touched still feel as if they are crawling with insects. Though he knows that she is no longer doing so, it seems as if Yennefer reads his mind when her hands go up from his lower back to cup around the sides of his ribcage, her fingertips barely brushing the softness of his stomach. She goes back for more lotion to rub into his chest and abdomen and then moves down to his legs as he insists on doing his own arms. He watches her like he can’t believe she’s real as her thumbs slide smoothly across the tense muscles of his calf, wine-dark irises glancing up at him occasionally through the fan of her eyelashes. When she rises to her feet, Geralt takes her hand in his and presses a kiss to the back of it. “What can I do for you?” he asks, earnest and near-pleading. The fingertips of his free hand feel the bottom hem of her robe where it brushes against her thighs, the fabric slipping easily between his fingers. “It seems I’d have difficulty returning the favor with the backrub. You’re all covered up.”

The raven-haired mage shrugs. “I’ve already moisturized anyways; I used a spell to do it quickly while you were still drying off.”

Geralt eyes her suspiciously, because that had been quite a short period of time. “…You definitely could’ve magicked me clean earlier,” he guesses, his tone slightly accusatory.

The corners of Yennefer’s mouth curve upwards the tiniest bit. “Maybe so. But I sincerely suspect it wouldn’t have been nearly as relaxing or enjoyable an experience as the bath we just took together was.”

Geralt’s responding silence is proof of how much he truly enjoyed their time in the tub together; a single complaint isn’t quickly forthcoming to his mind or lips.

Not waiting for him to gather his thoughts and continue his line of inquiry, Yennefer retrieves the comb from the side of the tiled bath and puts it to use once more on the witcher’s white locks. They’ve knotted slightly again from the roughness of the drying strategy he employed, and Yennefer resists the urge to sigh aloud. If she did, even if it was the quietest little huff of a thing, Geralt would hear it and want to know what was wrong, and she would have to explain her disappointment in his near-barbaric treatment of his hair, and perhaps question his reasoning for allowing it to grow so long in the first place if he was only going to spend his days mistreating it. What would he have done next if she hadn’t been here? Would he have brushed it out at all? Left it as it was and gone to sleep with a tangled rat’s nest upon his head? And no matter how nice the scent of it was, she hasn’t forgotten or forgiven that he’d meant to scrub through his hair with bar soap.

Instead of voicing her many grievances and queries, she works quietly, meticulous fingers finding and helping to pick apart the newest entanglements. Soon the witcher’s hair is a sleek white curtain once more. Yennefer carefully goes over it with the towel a final time, squeezing excess moisture from the strands.

By the time she’s finished, Geralt’s eyelids are closed and his breathing is slow. She draws him from his light doze with a sweet kiss against his lips, her fingertips curling behind his ears. There are dark shadows beneath his golden eyes as they flicker open and she knows he must badly want to fall into bed and get some proper sleep, but there is one last thing she intends to treat him to before they can leave the bathing chamber behind.

The glass lid of the face cream container clinks softly as she removes it. Offering it to the drowsy witcher, Yennefer explains, “I was going to just put this on for you, but you can do it for me, too. If you want.”

The jar’s contents smell faintly of clay and aloe and tea leaves. She has to advise him away from taking far too much of the thick lotion as he sticks sleep-clumsy fingers into it. The sorceress watches Geralt’s face while he attentively begins smoothing moisturizer over the skin of her forehead, his silvered eyebrows furrowing together slightly in concentration. As he continues, it feels as if he’s mapping out her features with his gentle fingertips and, despite his visible exhaustion, his gaze is observant as he makes sure the cream is evenly spread out and rubbed in. He feels along the angles of her nose, following the slope of its sides down to her cheeks and then traces up along her cheekbones; outlining the edge of her upper lip as he makes sure to get above it, Geralt eventually finishes with a caress of the soft spot beneath her chin.

When the witcher is done, Yennefer thanks him with a brush of her lips against the palm of his hand and, letting go of his wrist, she dips her own fingers into the product in the glass dish. He doesn’t watch her work for as long as she did him; his eyes soon slip shut once again beneath her soothing ministrations. She swallows the slight sting of guilt that tries to rise in her throat at having kept him from a proper bed for so long, reassuring herself that the cleanliness and relaxation from the bath could only result in his slumber that night being deep and restful. (That was what the bard had advised at least.) There would be no rush in the morning hours either; the monster was already dead by the witcher’s sword and, if necessary, she would insist to their host that its slayer be allowed to stay abed as long as he wished. The biggest difficulty could be getting Ciri to leave him sleeping once she was awake. The girl had wanted to stay up and greet Geralt when he returned from the hunt, but as the night hours had dragged on and her auburn-dyed head slowly drooped down towards her chest, she finally lost the battle against her own heavy eyelids and succumbed to sleep. Yennefer had carried the slumbering princess to her temporary bedchamber in the tower and returned to the front room of their suite to continue her own vigil in wait of the witcher’s reappearance. She’s certain that come morning she’ll have to console a young girl who is slightly upset with herself for falling asleep earlier than she intended to, but in the sorceress’s opinion it’s likely healthier for Ciri not to have seen her somewhat of an adoptive father’s gore-covered entrance. The smell coming off him alone could’ve been scarring for her.

The raven-haired mage smears the last of the lotion on her fingers along the bottom of Geralt’s jaw and down his neck, spreading it out until its light hue vanishes against his skin.

Slivers of yellow peer blearily up at her as Yennefer pats the witcher on the cheek, rousing him for what she hopes will be the final time that night. “Bedtime,” she whispers into his ear.

His reaction reminds her of an excited puppy as he immediately springs upright and insistently nudges her along towards the door to the bedroom, bouncing slightly on the balls of his bare feet. She resists the urge to laugh at his contradictory antics; it seems the prospect of laying down on a proper mattress has imbued the witcher with a rush of fresh energy.

Luckily said bedroom is only a doorway away, as Geralt’s newfound vitality quickly deserts him. He crawls on top of the duvet and collapses face-first into cushiony down softness. His hair spills messily over the pillowcase, its strands pale against the dark blue of the sheets like midnight moon beams playing on the surface of a lake.

Beside the bed, Yennefer is once again removing her black dressing gown. The witcher hears the click of a metal cap and the swish of liquid against glass as the raven-haired woman picks up a bottle from atop the carved wooden bureau. Lilac and gooseberries curl the barest coils of fragrance into the air, acidic and sweet and heavy on the tongue. Turning his head so his voice won’t be buried in feathers, the white-haired man pleads quickly, desperately, “Please don’t put on your perfume tonight.”

The sorceress’s movements still and the sound of aromatic liquid spritzing doesn’t come to sensitive ears. After a long pause the cap clicks back into place and the glass of the bottle taps against the polished wood top of the dresser as it is set down. Instead of growing more intense, the scent has already begun to fade from the air. Geralt turns his face back into the pillow, feeling an odd sort of pleased warmth in his chest.

Not one to lay bare-assed atop the covers like certain uncouth men, the sorceress slides between the sheets when she climbs into the bed.

Without looking, the witcher reaches for her and whines when he finds fabric blocking his fingers from her skin. He twists onto his side to face her, a sulky frown turning down the corners of his mouth.

“You’re the one who didn’t properly get into bed,” Yennefer tells him.

Geralt’s response is all of an incoherent grumble, but he wriggles around until he’s managed to shuffle his body beneath the covers beside hers. Hands reach out again as fabric settles around their forms and she slides willingly into them, relishing the solid warmth of his skin against hers. Calloused fingers are rough against the softness of her waist.

When they settle into the mattress together, she is on her back with the witcher curled up against her side. His arms twine around her torso and his cheek rests near her shoulder, her breast fitting into the curve of his throat. A hairy and muscular leg hooks around her knee and toes that are slightly cold against her skin press into the back of her calf. The tip of Geralt’s nose occasionally brushes against the side of her neck and his breath is warm against her collarbone as he quietly sighs in satisfaction. She still smells like she does when he dreams of her in his home.

They lie there in silence for a long moment, eyes shut and breathing steady as the minutes crawl past agonizing second by second. The only light in the room emanates from the low-burning fireplace, a slowly dimming blaze, its warmth embedded deep within the hearth stones.

A blackened log crackles and sparks fly as it part of it crumbles away.

Burnished irises gleam in the faded firelight as pale eyelids slit slightly open. Geralt’s voice is low when he finally murmurs aloud to the woman he can tell is similarly awake, “I shouldn’t still be missing Jaskier like this.”

After an indecisive pause and a long exhale, Yennefer parts her lips to say, “You and that bard have known each other longer than even you and I; it makes sense that you would find things about him to miss. Besides,” she opens violet eyes and tilts her head sideways and down to look at him as best she can, though his gaze is lost up above, unfocused on the ceiling beams, “I thought I made it blatantly clear the first time we met that I knew _something_ was going on between the two of you.”

The look he gives her is saturated with what the sorceress interprets to be concerned denial. “Yen, Jaskier and I were never more than friends,” the witcher tells her, and there’s the denial.

She can’t help it; she snorts aloud. “Really? You know I’ve just been in your thoughts, Geralt; I saw the evening with the chamomile-”

He’s already shaking his head dismissively, embarrassment flickering across his expression as he explains that all it had been was, “Simply wishful thinking on my part. Jaskier has no interest in me that way.”

…Yennefer is going to develop a headache. Had he truly not picked up on the stormy aura of jealousy that had always surrounded the song-writing menace whenever a certain dark-haired sorceress was in the vicinity? She resigns herself to pointing out the obvious to what she now realizes is a deeply-oblivious man. “Geralt, that bard has been pining for you since he first started nipping at your heels. Even I’ve heard the rumors, you know! Besides, what, you think it means nothing that nearly all of his other musical muses besides you are beautiful women he dearly wishes to bed?”

“No need to remind me that he’s written songs about you, too, Yen,” the witcher shoots back.

That gets a chuckle out of the sorceress. “Oh, very clever. Well done.” She’s tries not to be too endeared by Geralt’s responding proud smile. “Though I wouldn’t say the songbird wishes to bed me,” she hedges. Jaskier finds her physically attractive of course, that was clear from the moment they truly met, but she is certain that on an intellectual level, having sex with her is as appealing a prospect to the man as shagging a porcupine would be.

The look the witcher gives her in return is contemplative and, _oh_ , isn’t this juicy. “You’re wrong,” Geralt says, as if he has any authority on being able to tell who Jaskier is and isn’t attracted to.

“Let’s not change the subject now, though,” Yennefer suggests, slightly flustered despite herself. During the time she’d spent with him in Oxenfurt after Sodden, Jaskier hadn’t made any sort of his typical overt advances on her. But she’d been asked not to tell the witcher about that time yet, so she continues pushing him on his feelings instead, “You really hadn’t noticed that the bard is at least halfway in love with you? Arousal causes such a physical reaction in humans; surely your sensitive nose can smell when someone nearby is affected by it.”

“Yes, of course I can. But Jaskier always-” Geralt stops in his tracks there as something seems to finally click together in his mind, mouth hanging open momentarily before snapping shut. He looks as if he’s just bitten into a lemon.

If Yennefer had any interest in pretending to be a nice person, she might’ve attempted to stifle her amusement at Geralt’s soured expression. “You look like you’ve just bit into a lemon,” she tells him informatively instead, trying her best to picture mentally how bright red he would be in this instant if his biology had allowed him to properly blush. The image she conjures in her mind causes her to burst into whole-hearted laughter.

Despite her mirth being at his expense, when she finally calms down Geralt is smiling softly up at her. She smooths over the creases the expression brings to the outer corners of his eyes with gentle fingertips and then slides them down to feel the angles of his cheeks and the turned-up corners of his mouth.

“I heard the two of you had a fight,” she presses eventually, extending a verbal olive branch to try and continue their earlier conversation.

“We did,” Geralt acknowledges after being quiet for a long moment, his voice tinged bitter with guilt. “Nearly immediately after the argument you and I had. I was… upset that my choices had driven you away, and took it out on him when he tried to act like everything in the world was normal. It was more of a one-sided tirade on my part than an argument, to be honest.” He shifts uncomfortably, his chin brushing against her collarbone. “When you and I have fought,” he continues, “we both give our fair share of cruel barbs and, truthfully, your anger with me is often justified.” His lips touch against her neck for a brief second. “That day, I blamed him for things that weren’t his fault and told him, essentially, that if I never saw him again I would take it to be a blessing. And so he left that mountain without me, and our paths have stayed separate since.” His explanation finished, the witcher falls silent and turns his face into the sorceress’s neck. She can feel the tickle of his eyelashes against her skin as he blinks rapidly.

Yennefer regards the figure curled in her arms carefully before voicing her next question. “Why would you treat one of your oldest friends that way?”

“He’s never actually… stayed gone before,” Geralt admits miserably, which isn’t the sort of answer she’s looking for. She knows Geralt is not petty and cruel enough to spit untruths and needlessly hurt the other man simply because he thought there wouldn’t be consequences.

“But _why_?” she asks of him, “Why would you try to send him away from you in that way? What were you even thinking??”

Despite being the one to have begun it, now Geralt is ready to put an end to this conversation. He wants to claim the weight of the day is pulling him too insistently towards sleep to continue talking and shut his eyes and mouth for the remainder of the night. But Yennefer would accuse him of running away from his feelings, of avoiding the truth behind his actions. And she’d be right, of course, and his dreams would be restless because of it. So, begrudgingly, the witcher tries to sort the mess of his thoughts into something resembling a coherent explanation.

It is so, so difficult as they scatter before him and slip through his fingers like a cloud of blackbirds is disturbed from a crop, and eventually the words that manage to claw their way up his throat are, “I was thinking… of crow’s feet.”

“…..I see,” the raven-haired woman finally responds, and Geralt feels that perhaps she truly does. They had been her words after all, spoken in mean jest but still a reminder of an uncomfortable truth that the events on the mountain had just driven in further.

It is quiet for a moment between them, before the witcher tentatively asks the question that’s been on his mind since she’d kissed him in the bath; “You truly aren’t angry that I think of Jaskier in that way?”

Yennefer huffs slightly, but her fingers continue to idly trace patterns along the skin of his back. “Certainly it rankles a bit,” she admits, “but the bard and I are different enough that it’s nothing threatening to me. There are things you find attractive about him that I am completely unwilling to emulate. Like that chest hair. Or his proclivity for singing novel bawdy songs he’s picked up across the different regions of the Continent.”

The white-haired man finds her assessment of his tastes more humorous than insulting, but he still isn’t entirely reassured by her words. Noticing this in his expression, the sorceress sighs. “Geralt. Lives like ours are long and this world is bleak. Colorful fluttering things and perverse art and the vibrant, fleeting spirit of humanity are all we have to brighten this dark eternity.” She waves a hand dismissively. “Besides, I could easily tell you didn’t want him here _instead_ of me. You wanted it to be all three of us.”

She wonders if the witcher has fallen asleep, with how long his silence lasts, but finally his voice comes, husky and low, as his breath tickles against her neck, “And is that something you could want to?”

“…I’m not sure.”

“Hmmm.”

There’s a slight lull in the conversation as the witcher struggles to find what to say next. “So,” he finally starts, “what you’re saying is that I should apologize to him.”

The slightest huff of bemused laughter escapes Yennefer. “Geralt, if you see that man again and don’t immediately tell him you are sorry for the way you treated him, I will stand by and watch as he rightfully attempts to beat you to death.”

“..…Hmmmm.”

“If he doesn’t take a swing at your head with that lute of his, I’ll be disappointed in him, actually,” the sorceress continues contemplatively. She can feel as the witcher’s mouth curves into a small smile where his cheek is pressed against her shoulder.

“Thank you, Yen,” Geralt murmurs, his voice thick with the exhaustion that slowly seems to be overtaking him.

She doesn’t really understand his gratitude in this instant and no response springs to her lips, so instead Yennefer strokes fingers through the witcher’s white hair as his body softens further against hers, his breathing deep and steady as he finally slips beneath the long-sought surface of slumber.

The room is dark around their twined-together forms, gleaming red embers winking out at the bottom of the hearth like stars vanishing from the sky. It may be a long time before they can have comfort like this again, Yennefer thinks to herself, violet eyes tracing the barely visible lines of the canopy overhead. She is glad they took their time tonight and made something like the most of it, at least, despite the member of their traveling party who could have used the rest the most being occupied with a particularly strenuous job for the majority of their stay. Turning her face downwards, the sorceress presses her nose to the crown of Geralt’s head and takes a slow breath in like he has done with her so many times before. Lemon and lavender and the slightest hint of pine; she knows that, years from now, similar combinations of scents will pull her memory back to this night for the briefest of instants. With her eyes closed and the side of her face resting on top of his head, she allows herself to follow the witcher into sleep.

The next morning they are awoken by a piercing scream. Geralt bolts upright at the sound, golden eyes frenzied and white hair a flyaway cloud around his head. A groggy Yennefer grasps for him with sleep-gentled fingers from where she lies, heavy-lidded and squinting against the bright rays of the dawning sun outside as it streams in through the open curtains of the bedchamber’s window.

“What. What’s going on,” she mumbles tiredly, palm wrapping over the swell of his bicep as she sits up in bed, the blanket falling down to pool on top of her legs.

Fingertips brush against her knuckles as the witcher murmurs back, “Hold on.” Yennefer’s hand slips from his arm when he climbs out of bed, setting his jaw against the shivers that want to vibrate through him at the touch of the chill morning air against his naked skin. Moving to the window, Geralt undoes the latch and cracks the glass pane open, letting in the sounds of morning birdsong and upset yelling. From where she’s seated the sorceress can hear a woman’s shrill voice, high-pitched and hysterical, though the words being spoken are indecipherable to her ears. As Yennefer watches him, the witcher’s head angles to the side as he listens intently, his hearing much sharper than hers.

With a grunt, he shuts the window and turns towards the bed. The dark-haired mage looks at him with curiosity as he clambers back beneath the covers beside her. “What’s happening out there?” she asks.

“Scullery maid found the archgriffin head,” he explains succinctly, and crystalline eyes blink down at him in shock.

“You? Left its head out in the courtyard?” Yennefer finds herself somehow both shocked and completely unsurprised by this choice of his.

Geralt shrugs one shoulder, his tone nonchalant as he explains, “No one was awake to take it off my hands when I returned last night, and I certainly wasn’t going to leave it on Roach or bring it up here. Besides, with the security this place has it wasn’t like anyone was going to steal it. Don’t know why they’d want to anyways.” His forehead presses to her hip; the witcher is snugging deeper into the mattress while Yennefer is still sitting upright. “Yen. Let’s go back to sleep for a bit,” he suggests.

“Oh… but…. What if that screaming woke Ciri up too and she goes downstairs to see what the commotion is?” the sorceress asks, glancing towards the bedroom door.

An exasperated exhale blows against the top of her thigh. “The room she’s in doesn’t have any windows,” the witcher reminds Yennefer. “Besides, we both know you set up a spell that will alert you the instant she leaves her room.”

The dark-haired woman’s contemplative, “Hmmm,” makes him sigh again, though it’s tinged through with fondness at the similarity to his own mannerisms.

Calloused fingertips stroke up the side of her leg. “Sleep with me, Yen,” Geralt grumbles out roughly against her skin. When he finally turns his head to look up and meet the gaze that has been focused on him for a long, quiet moment, a teasing smirk is shaping the curve of Yennefer’s mouth. “You know what I mean,” he tells her, and she does, so she gently nudges him to the side slightly in order for her to slide back between the sheets.

They lie facing each other in the bed, curled around each other again. Geralt’s hand finds the curve of the raven-haired woman’s waist; hers comes up to cradle the back of his neck. The blankets are like a warm cocoon around them, keeping in their shared body heat against the cold of the room. But there is no sudden metamorphosis coming here; for this pair, dawn has already broken. Fate’s dice have long been cast and examined and cast again. The two of them are here in this instant because they are meant to be, in this form and none other, blessed (or cursed) to slowly grow and learn because of each other. Together they reach for slumber once more, fingers twined together and hearts beating in rhythm, as the rising sun paints their tangled limbs golden and the insides of their eyelids red.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed :) Leave a comment telling me about your favorite part(s)?
> 
> also posted [here](https://nonbinary-renfri.tumblr.com/post/642907991497179136/nothing-fits-the-body-so-well-as-water)  
> inspired largely by [this soap](https://www.nizhonisoaps.com/product-page/pi%C3%B1on-pine-soap)
> 
> Come find me on tumblr @nonbinary-renfri!


End file.
